Review

Review Summary: Bring Me The Horizon throw off their tarnished cloak of deathcore and move into a much more accessible space.

There was a lot to worry about in the lead up to Suicide Season. Like, say, the fact that the album was called… well, Suicide Season. Or the ridiculous album art. Or the rather sterile affair that was Count Your Blessings. Or singer Oli Skyes’ strange habit of urinating on girls who wouldn’t sleep with him. Of course, Bring Me The Horizon have always had a bit of an image problem, and probably rightly so. Which is why it comes as somewhat of a surprise that Suicide Season is actually… pretty decent.

Taking a leaf from the how-to book of fellow metalcore rockers Underoath, Suicide Season finds Bring Me The Horizon throwing off their tarnished cloak of deathcore and moving into a much more accessible space of straight up metalcore. Like Underoath's turn for the better, everything here is just that tad bit more… pop. Gone, for the most part are the technical flourishes of guitar wankery and the deep death growls of Oli, replaced instead by a flurry of cleaner, gang chanted vocals and a myriad of catchy chug-chug heavy moments. Not that this is so much as a drastic change of sound, but rather a step further down a path already laid out by Count Your Blessings. After all, it’s not hard to imagine an entire army of black fringes and angry t-shirts still heralding Bring Me The Horizon as the best thing to happen to music since Norma Jean. With an insatiable love for breakdowns and atrocious lyrics coupled with a rather repetitive repertoire of sounds, Suicide Season is just fine and dandy – if you’re into that sort of thing.

The problem of course with Count Your Blessings was that it simply took itself too seriously, where no one else did. Which, given its rather barren offering of music, is more than fair enough. It’s a problem the band has seemed to recognize, because everything on Suicide Season, despite keeping up the intensity, is fresher and catchier, more fitting with the band’s youthful image. Take the opening of Sleep With One Eye Open with it’s JunJUNjunJUN Fuuuccck Yoouuu!. It’s a little immature, a little brash, but the band pull it off, if only because the music allows for it - for a little while. Oli even manages to take a dig at his aforementioned little ‘incident’ on the cutely named No Need for Introductions, I've Read About Girls Like You on the Back of Toilet Doors shouting: After everything you’ve put me through/I should have f'ucking pissed on you!. Clearly, this isn’t masterpiece-making material, and the catchy, almost party-like nature of the album becomes tedious, especially by the time songs like Diamonds Aren’t Forever roll around, with its repeated vocal lines and more of the same chug-chug atmospherics that saturate the album.

Irritatingly, Suicide Season is chock-a-block full of throwaway lyrical trinkets such as: ‘We will never sleep/ ‘cause sleep is for the weak/ we will never rest/ till we’re all fucking dead!!!’ (Diamonds Aren’t Forever) or ‘I won’t give up on you/ so don’t give up on me!!!” (The Sadness Will Never End), all of course screamed out at the appropriate intensity level of three exclamation marks. The musically ignorant might be tempted to label it all as ‘emo-rubbish’, but they’d only be half right. (Hint: it’s not the bit that starts with ‘e’).

While Horizon have more or less overcome the problem of predictable song-structures, the same cannot be said of having a predictable sound – Which is still probably just as bad. Heavy still remains the order of the day, and although the band tried to fix this by throwing in occasional curveball such as random digital sound distortions in The Comedown or the hint of strings in Chelsea Smile (the two opening and best tracks on the album), none of it really pierces the building monotony of the album as it progresses. Horizon also have a tendency to drown their listeners in breakdowns – another rather fairly unpleasant musical sensation.

Still though, fans will find more to love on here, from Oli’s incredibly solid vocal performance to Matt Nicholls’ equally impressive job on the skins, while others will decry Suicide Season as another cancer spot on their beloved music scene. The reality of course lies somewhere in between – Suicide Season is simply competent. It works where it has to, and even if its candy-sweet chugginess wares thin after a while, at least it sounds just about right in the first place.

Ok... wow first off Underoath HAS played deathcore if you know anything about them. Look up their albums Acts of Depression and Cries of the Past mmm... yeah its death core... And you obviously have only listend to the album once cuz the end song Suicide Season and Diamonds Aren't Forever are probably the best songs on the album imo and all my friends... as for the song "No Need For Introductions..." it was probably a song written cuz he was pissed off that he was falsly accused of him "pissing on a girl" that was just a rumor going around... the song simply represnts that he SHOULD have pissed on her because of all the trouble that she put him through... and Breakdowns are a necesity (spelt that wrong) for deathcore and metalcore music... even if you listen to Underoaths new album u can tell there are breakdowns in the songs... its just a part of that genre of music and is not "unpleasent" if you find it unpleasent go listen to some Relient K... Thank You =) (note this is my opinion im not putting u down)

Yeah those four songs are the real highlights of this album, everything else isn't as good.

I was sort of bordering between giving this a score of 3 or 3.5, but I cut it more slack than usual 'cause I don't actually mind this as much as alot of others do.

To Elsewhere: I didn't say breakdowns are unpleasant. I said drowning in them is. If they're used right they're fantastic musical devices, but after a while here all the breakdowns lose their potency. You're right about Underoath though.

i think its a pretty damn good album however not as good as count your blessings.

i think that if CYB was anything to go by youve obviously got 4 very able musicians, and in an effort to stray away from their deathcore roots they have squandered most of that talent, with the open b string being the main note in most riffs and drumming patters that are repetitive and boring. despite the album being good all we can hope is for in their next album for them to go back to the good ol technical and deathcore bmth. 4 star